El doctor Seuss en español

A chance quip in a Skype conversation last Monday started it: my colleague quoted something from Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat (I can't remember what), and we laughed. I mentioned that the day preceding had been the birthday of Dr. Seuss, a fact I knew because I had passed my eyes over the Half Price Books calendar that I had acquired when book shopping in the U.S. in late January--it has at least one entry of a famous writer's birthday for almost every day of the year.

In the background was my current reading of a book called Haunting Jasmine for my Spanish conversation class. The Spanish version is titled La libreria de nuevas oportunidades (The Bookstore of New Opportunities) and several children's books are mentioned. I recognize most, but not all, of their Spanish names. Dr. Seuss is there.

Then a call went out, from an organization I have been a member of for more than 25 years, to contribute children's books to a project for the children of Baltimore, Maryland (USA). I'm not going to make the transatlantic trek to the conference in April, so I didn't think too much of it until one of the British members said that she wasn't going to bring British books so as not to inflict cruelty regarding the difference in spelling of American and British English, and another wrote back and said that he was going to bring British children's books, and the American kids could probably handle it. And the organizer of our conference's contribution to the book donation drive wrote back and said, "Bring British English books, U.S. English books — bring it on!"

So that is why I spent time this week reading about Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and the publishing history of The Cat in the Hat, which was first released in 1957 in trade and school editions. The school edition was written as an antidote to the simplistic and boring "Dick and Jane" reading primers that I learned to read from--or at least, that I read in my early years in school. By the time The Cat in the Hat was published, I already knew how to read, which I think accounts for the fact that I do not have the close relationship with that title that many of my near-contemporaries have, and why I, in fact, have yet to read this book.

As a follow-on, I spent a large part of today on Amazon.com, searching, reading reviews, evaluating, and ordering a few books in Spanish to send to the children of Baltimore as part of my organization's donation. Huevos verdes con jamón (Green Eggs and Ham) is in my package. It received rave reviews about the Spanish translation, which captures the rhythm and rhymes of the English original. The Cat in the Hat received horrible reviews about the translation, which does not rhyme, but The Cat in the Hat Comes Back (El gato con sombrero viene de nuevo) has a different translator, who passed the grade.

Too bad I'm having these books delivered straight to the conference. I'll have to find them in a library the next time I come to the U.S., because now I think it is time for me to read Dr. Seuss. In the original. But I'll check my local library here in Spain for the Spanish or bilingual versions first.

Children at Eroski Dos Mares

© 2014 Johannes Bjorner

We have no idea why these "seven little Indians" came suddenly parading through the Eroski supermarket at Dos Mares shopping center in San Javier, Murcia, yesterday. But they were happy and pleased to have their picture taken. We were glad to do it, and they made us happy too.

El Tiempo de Alcachofas

Estamos en Semana Santa y ya sabes que es tiempo de Alcachofas, habas y guisantes.

"We are in Holy Week and you know that this is the time of artichokes, beans, and peas."

Well, no, I have never thought of artichokes as especially a dish for the most important holiday in Spain, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter, though of course I realize that eating artichokes would be appropriate for the meatless meals of Lent, or Cuaresma, as the period is called here in Spain. But yesterday morning, the first Saturday in Lent, we drove south through the countryside just to be out to enjoy the sun and crisp spring weather. We saw field upon field of large green bushy plants that certainly looked ripe for harvesting, and I suspected they may be alcachofas, or artichokes. We stopped the car for a closer inspection, and sure enough, now I am certain what an artichoke plant looks like. The leaves are quite raggedy and have prickles, sort of a combination of giant dandelions  and thistles, with, of course, a large round layered bulb, or head, growing out at angles, which is actually the flower of the plant.

Artichokes ready for harvesting. © 2014 Johannes Bjorner

Given the plenitude of artichokes, I thought I should look for some artichoke recipes to try, and given that we have just entered Lent, I figured I have five weeks in which to investigate this dish if I intend to follow local custom and serve alcachofas during Semana Santa. Truth be told, I have never found an artichoke that I really enjoyed eating. I remember the first one very well. It was in Argentina, and my mother-in-law served artichokes as a special first course. I did not even know how to eat the plant that was placed before me, but fortunately this was a very long time ago, I was young, and I was a foreigner who had not grown up on a farm, so no reason I should have known how to eat an artichoke. It didn't have to be fancy, I was relieved to see. Patiently I watched as others tore the green leaves from the bulb and dipped them in melted butter, then sucked the inside of the leaves into their mouths. Eventually I tried it myself, and they didn't taste bad as long as I soaked up enough butter. But I would just as soon have dipped anything else into the butter and then into my mouth.

Years later another neighbor made a nice bubbling hot artichoke dip, also as an appetizer, and served it informally as a spread on crackers. These artichokes were mashed, as far as I could tell, for they bore no resemblance to a solid vegetable at all. That dish was OK, too. It was pleasantly warm and had added cheese. Edible, but I didn't ask for the recipe, even though she told me that it was perfect for spontaneous get-togethers, as I was likely to have all the ingredients on hand, once I bought the canned artichoke hearts.

If I have eaten other artichokes through the years, they have been disguised and/or innocuous.

Foods from Spain tells us that Spain produces 300,000 tons of artichokes annually, making it the second largest producer in the world (I believe it follows Italy) and the largest exporter.  Moreover, our drive from San Miguel de Salinas south to Murcia province took us smack dab through the largest artichoke growing area in Spain. The Foods from Spain website also gave me some ideas about contemporary uses for artichokes, but I needed to begin on a more elementary level. I found "Twelve Recipes with Artichokes" and then "Rapid and Very Simple Recipes for Artichokes" with a Google search on alcachofa recetas. I also found directions for peeling artichokes, and this, I realize, may be one of the biggest hurdles in preparing them. Nevertheless, I will be investigating and evaluating these recipes in the coming weeks. I'll let you know if I come across something that I like. And if I don't write about alcachofas again, you'll know that I didn't find anything that seemed worth the effort. Or, perhaps that I became sated with "Ode to the Artichoke," by Nobel literature prize winner Pablo Neruda. Really.

Callosa de Segura

Friday morning was a glorious day. When we looked outside the bathroom window, we could see bright-colored oranges in the grove that starts near our house and stretches out towards an unusual craggy mountain in the distance. The mountain was crystal clear. In a half hour we had loaded and started the washing machine and the dishwasher, so that some productive work could get done while we were out, and off we went to the town of Callosa de Segura.

Callosa de Segura lies inland and is a town with history, and well kept. We walked up and down several streets (Callosa is built right next to a mountain) enjoying the varied architecture of the houses, some old, some new, some ornate and elaborate, but all, it seemed, well-maintained. There is a beautiful central plaza, with plantings, walkways, and a fountain, and since the sun had disappeared by the time we reached there, we looked for a café where we could sit inside and have a café con leche and tostada. We found Cafetería Las Rocas. In a little nook there was a tiny booth with an old square wooden table and two wooden benches facing each other, just enough for two people, or three if you pulled a chair up to the third side of the table. Which you would do, because on the fourth side of the table was an artistic cut glass window, with several layers of glass framing, a treasure in itself, but it also opened onto one of the most charming views I have ever seen.

We had left hurriedly, without camera or iPad. I have two pictures of that view, but they are locked inside my cell phone. I do not have a smartphone, or rather, I guess I do, but in addition to being smart, it is secretive, and it has not divulged to me, within the limits of my patience, the technique of siphoning images from its tiny window to a computer screen. So I will have to compose a word picture of the window and the view.

The window itself is rectangular, with the shorter sides at top and bottom. It measures, perhaps, 18 inches by 36. The surface is a mixture of clear and frosted glass, the frosted portions gracefully arranged in a large floral pattern, so that light refracts through the various irregular panes in interesting ways. By the time we got our coffee, the sun had reappeared and we were treated to lovely sunlight coming through the window, and a clear view outside of the plaza, a very tall palm tree, and another mature and tall tree the name of which I always forget, but we call it the upside-down Christmas tree, because the needles grow upwards on wide-spread branches, ideal as a base for Christmas tree decorations. Perfectly in the center of the horizontal pane of the window, but high up in the vertical, we could see the craggy rock of Callosa mountain, rivaling the rock of Gibraltar in its majesty, but in a sandy color rather than dark.

There was life in the plaza. Las Rocas had a large tent with many tables and chairs outside for the benefit of smokers and hardy souls who had not looked for the warmth of indoors. A few people were seated at the tables, and I watched the server take drinks and snacks out to them. A feeble older woman walked slowly by, escorted by a younger woman, her daughter, perhaps, or a neighbor. Several women walked by with child strollers, and in the distance on the other side of the plaza you could hear and just barely see some elementary school students engaged in a game of football. Occasionally a man or two would walk past, dressed in business attire, on the way to or from an appointment. It was still early, around noon, and there were all the signs of life in a busy village in late morning.

We paid our bill and walked out, and I turned to look into the window that I had spent such a pleasurable time looking out. I could not see in. The outer surface was a mirror, and I found myself looking at myself, with the green trees, the café tent, and the tall rocky mountain peak reflected in the background in a blue sky.

Extra Rinse Cycle

This morning I read in one of the free newspapers that this has been the driest winter in the Torrevieja area in years. In fact, it is said that we only got one-third of the rainfall that we normally get in February.

What rain we did get all seemed to fall on my clean laundry.

Three times in the past two weeks I hung laundry outside to dry in good weather: clear, dry, no sign of rain to come. Three times it received an unscheduled extra rinse cycle from nature before it got dry the first time.

Wet laundry with rainwater collected on the laundry machines container cover

My "laundry room" is the upstairs terrace of our house, which lies between the master bedroom (convenient for collecting the laundry) and my office (convenient for taking quick breaks from desk work to load the machine, hang things on the line, and bring them in again). The washing machine and tumble dryer are housed on the roofless terrace in a large green and tan plastic storage box with two doors: dryer on the left, washer on the right. It was designed and sold to conceal garden equipment, but it works fine for the two electric appliances. My transformation from a died-in-the-wool electric dryer dependent to a steadfast clothesline addict happened five years ago when we moved to a place where it was easy to hang things out and get a little sun at the same time. I almost always run a load of wash in the morning, planning it to make sure that the lengthy 1 1/2 to 2 hour cycle finishes before the changeover from discounted to expensive "regular rate" electricity: noontime in the winter, 1:00 PM in the summer. I rarely use the tumble dryer. For one thing, I would have to start earlier to make sure I was done before cheap electric time finished; for another, the technique of no-wrinkle drying does not seem to have made it to Spain. Then, too, I have grown to enjoy the mild exercise of hanging the laundry and the convenience of getting into the sun and fresh air for a short period of time.

It has happened before that rain has come down on my hanging laundry during an afternoon, but it is rare, since rain showers in Spain usually come during nighttime hours. What I generally do when I leave my desk at the end of the afternoon to collect the laundry before going downstairs to start dinner, and discover that it has rained, is just wait. Let it stay up all night, and by the time that I am out of bed the next morning (which can be quite late, depending on my in-bed reading and iPadding) the sun has returned to the sky and the laundry is dry.

This past Thursday, though, when I glanced at the laundry at 5:30, I was shocked and dismayed. I hadn't heard any sign of rain, and I had been "right next door" the entire time. What's more, I had sheets and comforter covers on the line, and two nightgowns recovering from coffee stains (that happens when you lie in bed of a morning, reading and iPadding) and I had planned to put the linens right back on the same bed for that night.

Looking out at dry laundry the next morning

I briefly thought about firing up the tumble dryer, but I resisted and simply dug out the reserve bed linens instead. And considered myself lucky, as I always do when the extra rinse cycle surprises me, that the rain that day was not one of the ones that comes carrying Sahara sand, which drops dusty particles over everything, usually just after a car has been washed.

But that's another story.

Tons of Salt

The Torrevieja Salt Lakes

We live not far outside the city of Torrevieja, which is located at the bottom left of the map above, but stretches out into the surrounding areas. Our town, Algorfa, is located  off the map at the top right, and the yellow line going diagonally across the screen, the CV-905, is a two-lane highway connecting our urbanization, Montebello, to the city of Torrevieja. It extends for about nine kilometers. Also known as the Crevillente Road, it runs between two sizable lakes, shown on the map. The "pink lake" to the left often has a pink shade due to the crustaceans living in it. The "green lake" to the right doesn't change color. We see both these lakes often, almost daily, as we drive to our petanca, Spanish lessons, shopping, and other social events in the area. Quite often, we see huge piles of salt surrounding the pink lake, because it is still a working salt factory (the green lake no longer produces salt, for some reason that I do not know).

Ever since we have lived here, we have heard that the lake provides salt to melt the snow on the streets of New York City in the winter time. I thought this was probably an apocryphal story, possibly with as much truth as that at one time, salt had been sold from this area to New York. It certainly seems like a long way to ship salt; doesn't northern Europe offer enough of a market?

This week, the Round Town News weekly paper featured a story that confirms the rumor. It reported that, "With the USA experiencing one of their worst winters for decades, and no sign of any major improvements in sight, this week the 'Sakura Kobe' left Torrevieja heading for the U.S. East Coast carrying 30,000 tons of salt." It is the largest shipment of salt that has left Torrevieja for a number of years, and more large container ships are expected to follow.

We were there early in the season. We know you need it. We are thinking of you.

Going Back Home to Roquetas

How many homes can one person have in a lifetime? Lots, I guess. I have just recently returned to my current home in Spain from my, what? original home in the United States. This past Thursday morning when I woke up, I realized that we had no definite arrangement on the calendar for that day. And when I checked, we had nothing definite for Friday, either. And it was a beautifully sunny day outside, so I wanted to go for a ride. Only a couple hours later, we had thrown a few pieces of clothing, our toiletries, and our electronic gadgets (cachivaches) into the car, and we were off to Roquetas de Mar, the Andalusian town we called home when we first came to Spain to live, in 2003.

Roquetas lies right on the Mediterranean about a three hour drive from our current home in Algorfa. It is in the province of Almería, which is the easternmost province of the comunidad of Andalusia, which stretches over almost the southern third of Spain, from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal on the west. For several months in 2008 and 2009 we drove the route in between often, as we commuted back and forth on occasion between the Roquetas condo and the tiny apartment we rented in Torrevieja, in Alicante province, to help us decide whether we really did want to pull up stakes and move to a new home in Spain. We determined that we did, and eventually sold the condo in Roquetas during the first year of the financial crisis that hit in 2008 and is still making its effects evident. Although we have talked about returning to Roquetas for a visit several times in the past five years, we had not. So this spontaneous trip was anticipated, but not planned.

Ironically we drove north to get onto the E-15. But as soon as we joined that major highway running through Europe, we went south, toward Murcia. The car knew the way, because this is how we go to Ikea, which has furnished much of our Algorfa home, and also to the Apple store, where we have gone for help and some of those cachivaches in the past two years. This time, though, we drove straight through Murcia, ignoring the two exits that we usually take. An hour after we had started, the road turned west, and we did, too, and then we really felt like we were on our way.

As it neared noontime we began looking for a restaurant that we had often stopped at during the time we were making frequent trips. The only problem was that we couldn't remember the name of it, nor the town in which it was located, nor the proper exit to take. Actually we knew that we wouldn't recognize the exit anyway, because we were not traveling on the same road that we used to use when we traveled between the two places. Then we traveled on a new toll highway,  the AP-7 (the P stands for Peaje, which means "pay, " and pay we did, to the tune of more than 11 euros, about $15 then, for a one-hour ride). We knew that the tolls had climbed even higher over the past five years, and we decided that we didn't want to support that highway robbery. So we were traveling the E-15, which in some places goes parallel with the AP-7, and we were on the lookout for an exit to the remembered restaurant in a not remembered town.

We gave up before we even got close, we discovered later, but instead we found a nice roadside restaurant on the side of an "easy off, easy on"service road. It was Mi Cortijo, which is a word I had to look up when I had a chance. My Cambridge-Klett dictionary says it means "country estate" or "country house," but an online reference I found first made it sound more like working farm and its various buildings. This establishment just looked like a large roadside restaurant. We sat at a table in front of the house and shared three tapas, some bread, a glass of wine and a gaseosa. It only took 25 minutes, start to finish. I think that perhaps the definition of tapas is changing in Spain, or at least in my  mind, to mean "fast food," because the various tapas offered by a restaurant are ready (and usually displayed in counter top trays) when you are. Most provide very good fast food. So in less than a half hour we were back on the road to Roquetas, which we reached just a little over an hour and a half latter, after an interesting stop.